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Elk Scintella
Born on a planet in a solar system with a large amount of sun and harsh conditions, when Elk got shifted from his planet to Earth... Nothing really spectacular happened to the lives of the humans around him save for the first man meeting Elk getting eaten before Elk knew better. But for Elk everything fascinates him about earth and so instead of being brought down by being taken from his natural planet, which he found boring, he has ended up deciding to research humans. If possible, he would like to be more like them. Abilities Enhanced Evolution Obviously there has to be some evolutionary strength in bugs. This strength is the ability to reproduce quickly and in a short amount of generations be able to induce necessary evolution. What this means is he can make new bugs. When he is doing this he needs more food to be able to produce more generations in a faster amount of time. Also, the quicker the generations the less of a lifespan the offspring have, as a general rule so anything of worth can't be made too fast unless he wants it to have the lifespan of a mayfly. On the defense/attack front, it takes two months for him to understand a poison enough to duplicate it in his insects. He dislikes parasites and because of that has issues with making them. He can make them but he is not likely to make them. He usually has about thirty fighting bugs at most, mostly to protect the larvae, since he doesn't want to harm humans and he has limited space if he wants to keep a normal looking human form without losing any of his individuals. Crossbreeding and Communication The ability to adapt and crossbreed his individuals with the earth insects. Adding new species comes with new adaptations depending on the bug but he can't get all bugs. There are several million different types of insects on Earth for different adaptations. Also, he doesn't have much space even besides that so some earth insects would have to replace his natural bugs. Also... Although crossbreeding can bring its own rewards, namely enzymes that they wouldn't have being from an alien planet and some adaptations that wouldn't come from said planet, the consequence is that they would lose certain characteristics from the harsh planet in these hybrids. Strengths like not being able to be pierced by blades or squashed that easily which can be a danger to the Elders which limits how much of this skill he can actually use. Still... He can learn the language of other bugs on earth over time and get alliances with them or sometimes even make enemies from miscommunication with earth insects just like with dealing with less intelligent humans but the crossbreeding has risks. Strength Needless to say, bugs that became intelligent enough on a certain planet in a far away universe with enough light from a sun to not have any recognition of color, are probably stronger than the average earth bugs. This strength is mostly in the "harder to kill" category. You can't really stamp them to death using your foot nor can you put them through enough heat to cook them. They also have the strength to move objects around bigger than their size alone or with a smaller amount of the others. This does not translate to them having no weaknesses though... They can still be killed by gas, water (ie, being drowned) or fire. Shapeshifting First... this is not exactly shapeshifting. He can't make himself fully into someone else with all the organ systems and stuff unless you lend him a biology book. Even then he would build his body around being conveniant for living as a colony of bugs that move around in different shapes rather than what is probably right... What he can actually do is make himself look like something else or someone else because of camoflauge. This is generally the physical outline and maybe some details. He doesn't understand color so the less time he has to understand a form, whether through study or through actually changing into it, the more likely the colors will be bleached. He can also change his shape into tentacles or weapons but it follows natural laws of mass conservation. He can't make a sword because he can't change the mass of his individuals, he can't make something without losing something in return and the more movement required the more food needed. But his bugs can imitate cloth, texture and color with some degree of error. Mimicry Elk can imitate full sentences or sounds of things. The problem with this is not in the copying of sound but in the fact Elk hears differently. He tends to hear by vibrations of sounds on his skin rather than actually through ears. If there isn't enough vibration from a sound then he will likely not be able to exactly imitate it. This also makes it so his voice is a little odd, sometimes rising or lowering from when he first learned a word, and he doesn't understand tone yet. Reading This bug man reads faster than humans. It's more because of how he reads then a natural talent. He separates his individuals and has them read one sentence on a page with the others reading their one sentence. One of the Gatherers (see Below) then will combine and process the information. He is so used to this method that when he has to try to read like a human he reads a lot slower and it's a lot more natural/quicker for him to read braille. He was taught beginner reading by Rayne Scientella then reverse engineered the rest. Intelligence Elk is quite intelligent although he doesn't seem like it with how child-like curious he is. This is partially owing to being a being that needed to make itself intelligent on a planet that you could barely see on owing to the light. But he can calculate things on a dime and he absorbs new information fairly rapidly. On the common sense front combined with his alien nature he can easily mess up with some social things, especially human social things. Spying Elk can spy on people using the individuals that can independantly live outside of Elk's body. These individuals are less intelligent and less memory then the collective whole. Also... They are individuals when they are away from the collective, if they decide to not come back or to form another colony, Elk can't really stop them unless he decides to kill them. Reproduction Not really a power of his but sort of an added note. Elk cannot reproduce with humans, he is too alien for that, and he is made up of bugs. The fact is that owing to the fact he is a colony, how he reproduces is through making a new colony, which involves producing enough extra bugs to be able to make them another colony. Since neither of them would be human, he'd recover pretty quickly afterwards and the new being would probably be fully grown in about a year, especially if it included earth bugs. Currently Elk doesn't want to make another colony. However... He will if something interests him into doing it, someone he likes wants him to or he could accidentally make one if he loses track of some bugs he sends for spying. Biological Profile Home Planet Important mostly owing to the fact that it explains why he is the way he is. His planet was one similar but not the same to earth with a sun closer to it. This essentially made it closer to a desert. The animals that best survive on the surface were ones that had limited sight, a good ability to handle heat and small enough to be able to hide under things when the sun's heat got to be too much. Most of the animals were also able to last for a long time without food but it was a kill and be killed planet. The place to find water and most animals was under the sand and dirt. There, in large caverns, could also be found most of the predators. Lacking sight but not lacking smell or the skill to know that all beings eventually had to get water it was a competition of speed and intelligence to get water. It was even harder to get food so most of the beings were omnivores. It rarely, if ever, got cold... under the crust was actually about as hot as a tropical area in the summer on the place the sun was shining at and about as warm as summer in Canada in August when on the cool side. Safe to say the surface was pretty hot. Appearance Elk's form can change due to his being made of bugs that camoflauge him to look more human. But his default form is dirty blonde hair in the slightly golden category, blue eyes and pale skin. His features are androgynous and Japanese due to the first human he met being that way. He is not on the tall side and lighter than a regular human. His clothing is made of his individuals and will get more elaborate the more individuals he has but will be less elaborate the less individuals he has. He doesn't generally wear actual clothing. When meeting him one can be disturbed because he doesn't quite have human appearence yet. He strattles the uncanny line and sometimes look like a photoshopped being. When it comes to his bugs, most of them look the same although not all of them reproduce the same, away from his body they are white beetle/cockroach hybrids. But there are five currently specialized ones that would have a hard time living away from the collective. They are named as Elk would term them. Elder/Gatherers: These are the memory centers of Elk's mind. If he were to lose all of them he would likely lose memory and never really have some of them returned owing to the sheer limited amount of time his individuals live. They actually are soft and large, with an appearence differing depending on the angle of light hitting them. They also run Elk and if they died he would just be the group without human form. The Elder title is generally given to those that are near their year of death or already dead. These bugs take 25 years to develop and live 50 years. Shapers: The shapers mainly work with texture and enhanced details on skin. The closest bug they resemble, even in reproduction, is aphids. They are small and generally on the short lived side, each of them live about the life of a mayfly. Without them, Elk's clothing would feel like beetle shell and skin the same way. Without them how he looks would be more uncanny valley. Singers: The singers are the beetles that make up his voice. He usually has about six of them. They allow him to speak. Being rather more flamboyant and yet stuck in the body mostly, they have adapted to show that. They have large, colorful wings and wing shells that can remind someone of a butterfly. The large shells and large legs also allow them a larger range. They live about five years and although they are developed in about two months, the bugs have a tendancy to stick to smaller numbers. The Crawlers: Obviously Elk's body is compacted to be able to have bugs move around very well. So how does he manage to feed his numbers and make sure everyone is in place? That is the job of the crawlers. the crawlers are the circulation system of his body. They are a cross between ants and milipedes. They live for about a month and their jobs mostly involve passing messages unable to be passed in the collective consciousness and giving food. They also search out food. The Defenders: The caretakers of the larvae for all the bug species are the defenders. They are built like horned beetles which allows them to move around the larvae but also fight anything that tries to kill the larvae. They have a life expectancy of 3 years if they don't die and there are usually fifteen of them. The number doubles if Elk feels threatened. They take a month to develop but this goes up by two months if he is adding something he is unfamiliar with like poison. Personal Belongings A necklace from Rayne with a dog tag with the word Elk inscribed on it. He also has a dark blue back pack filled with books, food and random objects he finds interesting. Personality :Elk is very optimistic and friendly owing to liking humans. Both former humans and actual humans he finds fascinating. Being from another planet he isn’t really bothered much by his displacement because he is too fascinated by humans as a whole and the colors! He is very child-like and because he has been around for at least a year he has managed to get some human characteristics. But he isn’t really human. That can be shown in his physical appearance but he also acts inhuman. He doesn't know a lot of the typical human norms and that includes typical behavior for genders. So sometimes he'll act like a female, sometimes like a male and sometimes he will be so devoid of gender markers in action he'll bother people. But he is getting better at it in order to not bother the people he wants to know. He gets excited about the oddest things. To him, something as simple as a oddly shaped spoon can fascinate him. That’s why he works in the place he does, because he is one of the few people willing to work in a dollar store. He likes meeting new people and will be really depressed if he is unable to. In general when he meets new people he’ll pretty much attack them with curious questions. He likes learning and to him, being on this planet is like being able to study a new species in their own environment. He can easily be distracted by movement, shiny things or colors. Colors are very new to him but he can get very bored by white or shades of white. Because to him white is something he is used to. When he learns of a new color he'll often try to find a way to encorperate it into his outfit or some part of himself that will not make people look oddly at him. He doesn’t really like being treated badly or having others he likes being treated badly. If this turns out badly enough he will threaten someone with his shifting ability but this is generally all bark no bite. He does his best to not kill people ever since he accidentally killed one person when he first arrived. He doesn’t quite understand gender which is why his form is so androgynous nor human norms but he knows enough to just be perceived as very odd by those who haven’t seen him burst into a crowd of bugs. He is unable to reproduce with humans and doesn’t understand their sex which is why he is asexual but he would like to try the romantic aspect. He is afraid of loud noises, birds, dying and a few other things but it’s hard to see him in a state of fright because he is just so cheerful. He thinks of the world as a good place despite all the bad things because he gets to study people. Plus people are so interesting even when they do bad things that he sort of lets them off. He is made up of bugs and they can separate from him. Away from the collective they are individuals but in the collective they are Elk. The colony is made up of males and females so he is technically both but he has a form to best suit the two humans he first met. For a better idea of how it works see Siphonophorae only made of bugs instead of being jellyfish. He uses male pronouns namely for human benefit but sometimes he slips into using we. He'll also distinguish between collective and individuals. His individuals have a name and the important bugs, listed above, have nicknames. History Elk started out as an entity of bugs on an unknown planet far away. This planet was filled with light from a very bright sun so eyes were useless save for navigating away from bad things in combination with hearing. He had a peaceful and pretty long life there although since he records time differently he doesn't know how to translate that into his actual age. On December 25th, 2012 he ended up on earth... The first thing he noticed was that suddenly everything was dark and adjusted accordingly. The next thing he noticed and was fascinated by was color. In particular this human thing... His individuals took apart the being and ate it for food while shaping themselves using the form. A while later they found a female and she brought them into her apartment. There she started to teach him over the year. If it weren’t for his intelligence he wouldn’t be as knowledgeable as he is now. He knows that he is supposed to be called he. She helped him with figuring out his name and getting his job. He also got the hair color, which is darker then he can normally do easily, by imitating her hair color. Without her he wouldn’t have been able to do anything in the world so he is very grateful to her. He was adopted by her which is how he got his last name and his government documents. When he felt he had learned enough, he got his own apartment in New York and is now currently treating everything as a social experiment. Relationships Allies Elk is not entirely certain what he thinks of her but they are friendly and she will answer his questions. That, more than anything else, endears her to him. Enemies (contact Amelia (Cassandra) or Bronx with help with the above code. Copy/paste more copies of the code from { to } and paste to add more characters. Time Line SEPTEMBER 24th, 2014 Once Around The Block This thread is basically a meeting between Tatjana and Elk currently still in the works. Trivia -Sleeps with a Teddy Bear and Fuzzy blanket -Favorite music is Rock and Metal owing to the vibrations but he also likes techno and all its genres -Unfortunately this is combined with a lack of understanding of how to dance -Is a sucker for sweets -Understands French due to his adoptive sister -Bit of a minor kleptomainiac of things he likes owing to a lack of understanding of human norms -Doesn't know how human reproduction works -Has a tendency to actually wear clothing in the winter since it is cold enough at regular tempurature for Elk that below zero would likely kill a large number of individuals. Category:Characters Category:Otherworld Category:Aliens